In Safford v. Redding, which can be found here, the United States Supreme Court found that the strip search of a thirteen-year-old girl by a principal in a public school violated her Fourth Amendment rights. The opinion increases the level of scrutiny for school officials when the level of the intrusion of the search increases. Under T.L.O., the level of scrutiny required was reasonable suspicion that the student has contraband on her person. In this case, a fellow student was caught with over the counter and mild prescription pain pills. She claimed that Redding gave her the pills. Redding's bookbag and outer clothing was searched, and nothing was found. She was then forced to strip to her underwear and bra and required to shake out her undergarments and remove the elastic strap of her bra.
The 8-1 majority (Justice Thomas reasoned that students check their Fourth Amendment rights at the school door) held that, because the suspected contraband posed no or minimal danger to other students, and the principal's level of suspicion that the student was hiding advil and its equivalent in her undergarments was not sufficient to requre such an intrusive and humiliating search, his actions violated the student's rights under the Fourth Amendment. The student who claimed that Redding gave her pills did not say when Redding gave her the pills or whether she gave the pills to her at school.
Since no pills were actually found, the Court did not speak on how its opinion would relate to the exclusionary rule (whether, had contraband been found, it could have been used against the student in court). The Court stopped short of saying that the principal could be sued for a civil rights violation -- though the dissent would have extended a private cause of action Redding.
This case will require a significant shift in Georgia law, which is laughable in this area. School officials have, for too long, been given a blank check when it comes to the Fourth Amendment rights of students. In Georgia v. K.L.M, 278 Ga. App. 219 (2006), the Georgia Court of Appeals held that the exclusionary rule dos not apply to searches by school officials and that their conduct is not improper unless the student is "whimsically stripped of personal privacy and subjected to petty tyranny." Perhaps the United States Supreme Court is now taking that blank check away.
Consider what it has taken for a school search by a school official to be considered violative of the Fourth Amendment before now:
The administrator must be:
1. Whimsical;
2. engaged in stripping the student of personal privacy;
3. petty; and
4. tyrannical
Even then, the exclusionary rule has not applied in Georgia. It is hard to imagine a search that would not have passed muster under Georgia law before this recent United States Supreme Court opinion.
Another interesting part of this case is that Justice Ginsburg seems to believe the fourth amendment implications of strip-searching a girl are more significant than strip-searching a boy due to body image and similar issues.
Comments